Legislators rolling back child labor protections
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* Kim Krisberg

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[Figure1](http://www.thenationshealth.org/content/53/6/1.2/F1)

A teen bags groceries at a store in Miami Beach, Florida, in 2022. In a troubling trend coordinated across multiple states, some lawmakers are removing rules that protect child workers.

Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg, courtesy Universal Images Group/Getty Images

On Feb. 13, lawmakers in Arkansas filed a bill to roll back laws on employing 14- and 15-year-olds. Less than a week later, a federal investigation made national headlines: Packers Sanitation Services was illegally employing children as young as 13 to clean up at meat-processing plants in eight states.

> “When you see the groups behind these laws, it feels less surprising. Employers simply did not want to abide by the reality that tight labor markets require more competitive wages.”
> 
> — Nina Mast

Two of the plants were in Arkansas. Laura Kellams, a child welfare advocate in the state, assumed the alarming news would squash movement on the child labor bill introduced just days earlier.

“I thought, surely this bill won’t run now,” Kellams, who serves as Northwest Arkansas director at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, told *The Nation’s Health*. “But the next week, it passed the House.”

Opponents like Kellams dug in, trying to stop the bill in the Arkansas Senate, arguing against removing requirements that kids younger than 16 get parental permission and obtain a permit that verifies their age. But the bill sailed through, and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed it into law in March. Now, a critical paper trail that helped protect vulnerable children and catch employers that break the law has been lost, Kellams said.

“We tried reminding (legislators) that this isn’t a 100-year-old problem,” Kellams said about the exploitation of child workers. “This is a crisis that’s happening today.”

Child labor violations, as well as efforts to roll back protections, are spiking around the country. The U.S. Department of Labor reported in February that since 2018, it has seen a 69% increase in companies illegally employing children. In fiscal year 2022, DOL ruled that 835 companies employed more than 3,800 children in violation of the law. Hundreds of those children were doing jobs deemed too hazardous for minors.

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National workforce shortages have led some companies to illegally employ youth workers.

Photo courtesy Joe_Potato, iStockphoto

The labor violations have involved employers in a range of sectors. For example, in May, DOL found that McDonald’s operators in Kentucky had 305 children — some as young as 10 years old — working more hours than legally allowed and doing dangerous tasks. The 10-year-olds sometimes worked until 2 a.m.

More than 600 child labor investigations were underway at DOL as of February. That number was up to 740 as of mid-June, a DOL spokesperson told *The Nation’s Health*.

Overall, U.S. child labor violations have “skyrocketed,” said Nina Mast, MPP, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. According to a March report from the institute — which Mast coauthored — the number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws in fiscal year 2022 increased 283% over fiscal year 2015. The number of minors employed in violation of hazardous work rules went up 94%.

“But the vast number of violations go unreported,” Mast told *The Nation’s Health*.

Mast said a variety of factors are likely contributing to increased violations, including a rise in unaccompanied migrant children; the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated poverty and economic insecurity; and more attention to the issue from DOL investigators.

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Photo by Master1305, courtesy iStockphoto

But despite more violations, efforts to roll back state child labor laws are gaining traction. In the last two years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, at least 14 states considered legislation to relax such protections, and eight bills have been signed into law.

Among them is a Minnesota bill that would let 16- and 17-year-olds do construction work; a New Hampshire law that lowers the age for busing tables where alcohol is served to age 14 and extends allowable working hours during school months; and a Nebraska bill that would lower the minimum wage for teen workers.

Mast said the same groups and think tanks are behind many of the rollbacks, such as chambers of commerce, restaurant associations and industry lobbyists. A *Washington Post* investigation published in April found that a Florida-based lobbying group — known as the Foundation for Government Accountability — is behind many of the rollback bills.

“When you see the groups behind these laws, it feels less surprising,” Mast said. “Employers simply did not want to abide by the reality that tight labor markets require more competitive wages.”

Younger workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and harm in the workplace, said Reid Maki, MA, director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League. He said he is especially worried about unaccompanied migrant children who face language barriers and may “have a desperate need for money.”

“To some extent, these workers are popular with employers because they’re a pretty docile group,” Maki told *The Nation’s Health*. “They’re not likely to demand a union, whistle blow or demand higher wages.”

In 2020, the rate of work-related injuries among 15- to 24-year-olds that required ER treatment was 1.5 times greater than the rate for workers 25 and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research also finds that longer work hours harm young people’s education and ups their risk of dropping out of high school.

Reid, who also chairs the Child Labor Coalition, said that in addition to addressing recent attacks on child labor protections, it is urgent to close longstanding child labor exemptions for the agricultural sector. Under federal law, for example, workers must be at least 18 to do tasks deemed “hazardous” — except in agriculture, where the minimum age is 16.

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While teens are usually restricted to low-risk jobs, a new law in Iowa allows them to work in roofing and demolition and put in six hours on school days.

Photo by Naveebird, courtesy iStockphoto

A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that since 2003, the majority of work-related child fatalities — over 200 — were in agriculture.

“They need equal protection under the law,” Reid said about young farmworkers.

There is some work to push back against the movement to weaken child labor laws, including legislation in Congress to increase penalties and a new DOL-led interagency task force on child labor exploitation. Laura Padin, JD, director of work structures at the National Employment Law Project, said enforcing existing laws could help too.

One example, she said, is the “hot goods” provision of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which can prevent interstate shipment of goods made in violation of child labor laws. Like Mast, Padin said the DOL division that investigates child labor is also underfunded and understaffed.

“There’s so many barriers to enforcement here,” Padin said.

Joe Enriquez Henry, state political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, said stopping attacks on child labor laws “goes back to the ballot box.”

In May, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a sweeping rollback of child labor protections. Among its measures, the new law lets state agencies waive restrictions on 16-year-olds doing hazardous work in sectors such as roofing and demolition. It also extends the hours that people as young as 14 can work on school nights to six hours.

While supporters of the Iowa law claim it gives young people a chance to hone work skills, Henry sees it as a way to “exploit Black and brown children” whose parents already work in low-wage sectors, such as meatpacking.

“We’re rolling back to a darker period where everybody in the family was working to make ends meet,” he said. “But until the politics of the state change, we’ll have to deal with it.”

For more information, visit [www.epi.org](https://www.epi.org) and [www.stopchildlabor.org](https://www.stopchildlabor.org).

*   Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association